Bring on the Chicks!

Starting on Saturday, June 24th, and ending on Monday June 26, eight chicks were born here at Razzberry Corner!  Two mama hens sat on the eggs the entire 3 weeks and are very proud mamas, Betty and Charlotte.  This batch of eggs we tried to write on the egg which hen laid it, so we know who is the real mama.  I love to study genetics and find it very interesting to see which character traits are carried forward in babies.  They're still young so I can't detect any traits now, but I will be looking as they grow and age.

Anyway, without further delay, here are the pictures.  Charlotte is the blonde mama and Betty is the black mama.

Charlotte has 1 golden baby and 3 striped chicks.

Betty has 1 white chick, 1 golden, and 2 striped.  Sadly, we didn't get any more black chicks because Betty was broody which means she was not laying when we collected and saved the eggs. 

Charlotte is still sitting one one guinea egg.  Guinea eggs take a week longer to hatch than chicken eggs.  We don't even know if the guinea egg is viable, but we figured we'd try and see if it hatched.  It came from our adult guinea hen, who spends all her time in the company of our adult male guinea.  But I don't think Charlotte will sit much longer on the egg now that the chicks are hatched.  We have enough guinea keets already, but I thought it would be nice to have another darker guinea keet (all our keets are blue/white or white, while our adults are pearl gray and royal purple - both dark colors).  Possibly if another hen becomes broody in the next few days we'll give her the 1 guinea egg, although it has less than a week to go if it hatches.